My buddy over at middlerage tipped me off to this article, about a book my sweetie and I agreed we’d want to read before seeing the movie: Kathryn Stockett’s ‘The Help’ Turned Down 60 Times Before Becoming a Best Seller.
Whatever comes to her now she has earned and then some. Me, I’ve been rejected exactly once this year. That’s not how you succeed as a writer.
I guess I knew this intellectually already, but reading this article really brought it home. We all know that info we post on Facebook and other social media sites is more or less public, no matter what security settings you use. The stuff just leaks out. Your birthday, gender, and zip code is enough to uniquely identify most of us in this country. Once someone has that, they can start to gather more information about you and share it with their friends.
But there’s another piece of information that most of us have shared all over the Internet, which when combined with the above, gives unscrupulous (or are they?) enterprises the ability to gather vast amounts of information about what you do even when you’re not using a computer.
What nugget of information is that? Your face. If you’ve used modern photo software, you may already have noticed that it’s getting pretty good at recognizing not just where faces are in your pictures, but whose faces they are.
Let’s say I own a big store, something like Target. I already have security cameras scattered liberally around the place. Imagine that now I can buy a list of faces in the zip codes close to my store. Suddenly I’m able to keep a record of which departments in my store each customer visits. The next time they come back, I can put a tease on a video screen as they walk in, tailored to their purchasing habits, or I can alert security if the person is a suspected shoplifter.
Of course, your friendly neighborhood government can use technology like that, too, and they already have your picture on file.
What to do about it? Realistically, nothing. The train has left the station, and there’s no calling it back. We could try to pass laws about this stuff, but they’d be pretty much impossible to enforce. You could try to scour the Internet and remove every picture in which you’re identified, but good luck with that.
The only counter-strategy I can think of off the top of my head is misinformation — tagging a whole bunch of different faces with your id, to create uncertainty over who the “real” you is. That only goes so far, however; once your face and credit card are linked at a retailer you’re done. It’s probably time to coach our children to not make the same mistake we did, instead to take a page out of Harlean’s book. She is a fiction. The Internet is no place for real people.
Coda:
The front panel of the article linked to above is about breaking the security on iPhones. It’s worth noting that while the article is correct, the same advice applies to anything protected with a password. The obvious thing missed in the article is that most people don’t put any password on their phone, rendering the rest of the warning moot. I use an Android, and my screen lock thingie has even fewer permutations than a 4-digit number. I’m not out to stop the pros; I put the lock on the phone when I read that California has ruled that searching a phone doesn’t require a warrant, even though searching a briefcase does. My lock is to stop prying during routine traffic stops. I don’t have anything to hide, but it’s important that everyone protects privacy, not just people with something to hide.
A closing note about passwords:
I just installed a honey pot on this site. The idea of a honey pot (or honey trap) is to create a tempting target that attracts wrongdoers, but once they put their hand in the honey pot they leave sticky fingerprints everywhere they go.
In Internet terms, the honey is a seemingly-innocent email address placed on a Web site, invisible to humans but easy for robots to find. When the spam harvesters scrape the email address off the site and use it, both the harvester and the spammer are caught and blacklisted, which reduces their ability to run robots and get their mail through.
The more people who participate, the more trouble spammers have spotting the honey pots. How can you help? Even if you don’t have control of your site or run a blog through one of the major services, you can pitch in. Go to Project Honey Pot and sign up. You can provide invisible-to-humans links to honey pots on other sites, if nothing else, and it doesn’t cost you diddley-doo.
If you click on the “swag” link in the header, you will see that they could also use a graphic designer. I imagine a spam-bear with his head stuck in a honey pot. How you communicate that it’s a spam-bear and not an ordinary bear I leave as an exercise for the visually talented.
Once Project Honey Pot compiles its list of villains and ne’er-do-wells, what happens next? Many major services use the list, and I also use a program called Bad Behavior which blocks blacklisted bots and spammers from reaching my site. Recently I added another layer called CloudFlare which is awesome enough for me to devote a separate episode to it. So, you have that to look forward to.
In the meantime, I encourage you to join the crusade to make life more difficult for those who want to use the Internet for evil.
So just to be clear, even though I work for Apple I have no special access to the plans of the hardware and OS guys. If I did have access, I wouldn’t be able to post speculations like these. All this is the same guesswork you can do if you stop and look at your operating system as it evolves.
Last night I installed the latest Mac operating system (‘Lion’) on my work machine. We’ll see how that goes before I put it on anything more important. A couple of things struck me immediately, however, that I think may be indicators of where Apple is heading.
1) No scroll bars. Well, barely. There’s something scrollbar-like that appears when you move stuff around, but there’s a fundamental shift in the UI going on here. In the past you worked the thumb on the scrollbar to move the content in its window. When you worked the scroll wheel on your mouse, you were in your mind moving the scrollbar thumb. Now, in your head you grab the content of the window and move it around – which goes in the opposite direction as the scroller thumb. So the wheel on your mouse works ‘backwards’ in Lion; before you were moving the scroll thumb down, now you’re moving the content down, which moves the thumb up.
Opinion: I’m ok with this overall, but there are times when there is no indication that you can scroll. There are also cases where there’s no indication that the corner of a window can be dragged to resize the window. I’m not comfortable with designs that presuppose you know stuff.
2) Bold prediction: the magic mouse is Apple’s last major mouse. It’s a mouse/touchpad hybrid, bringing people closer to the touchpad replacement. The company that brought the mouse to the consumer will also be the first to take it away. Interestingly, the company that only put one button on its mouse will be hanging its hat on a very complicated set of finger gestures and combinations. They can do a hell of a lot, and they’re intuitive, if you already know them. (I just accidentally discovered the gesture for switching tabs in my browser — only, shit! It’s not switching tabs, it’s like using the back arrow. And there’s a bug! I almost lost this entire episode!)
Opinion: with the iPad and whatnot, multiple-finger user interfaces are here. I should have applied for a patent fifteen-plus years ago when I thought about making touch screen interfaces with actual knobs to turn and stuff like that. If I’d had this blog back then it would have shown up in the Get-Poor-Quick pages. But I didn’t, and now that invention belongs to other people. Because they built it, and I only talked about it.
As an employee of your favorite fruit-flavored gadget company, I find myself noticing some interesting things about the way my employer promotes itself. For instance, there are the buildings of Infinite Loop. There are signs at the entrances to the campus, but on the buildings there are no logos.
No logos on any of the other buildings Apple occupies. No logos on the big gray busses that glide up and down the freeways, taking workers to and from Cupertino. (The busses have WiFi, of course.) No logos on the shuttles to the railway stations or on the bikes you can check out to travel between buildings.
You’d never know, driving on I-280, that you were passing through a company that has more cash on hand than the Unites States.
So why wouldn’t a company as intent on spreading its brand take advantage of putting their logo on stuff they already own? I think because it would almost become a joke in iCupertino. There would be an apple on every damn thing in the city. HP used to have a big presence here, but now Apple’s new mother ship will be built on their old campus. (Business note: few places in the world will have greater demand for sandwiches and beer than the one-block radius around the new Apple campus.) Seagate’s here, and plenty of other companies, and they put up the signs. Apple just is.
But none of that is why I sat down to write this little episode. I’m watching baseball right now, and an ad for the iPad 2 came on. It’s a nice, friendly ad, and one of the little vignettes it plays is of a very small child writing his first words with his finger.
The camera moves over the iPad (2!) as the child completes the ‘n’ in ‘lion’. His penmanship is pretty good. (I know it’s a ‘he’ because he’s wearing blue.)
Of course, Lion is also the name of the operating system Apple released last week. Coincidence, I’m sure.
Just a quick note to those who might have been waiting to start reading Allison to make sure there would be an end. I understand completely; I rail consistently about stories with no clear scope yet they expect me to join in and follow every word. And when you throw in my irregular update schedule, all the more reason to not get caught up.
I’m happy to announce that Allison in Anime: White Shadow is wrapped up in a neat little (anime-style-inscrutable) package. It reads like a not-bad first draft; there are plenty of opportunities I see looking back, but overall I feel pretty good about it.
I hope you enjoy.
The end of the first chapter!
You know, I’m not going to give a synopsis at this point. The episode is the end of chapter 1. Chapter 2 is really going to kick Seiji’s ass. So the monks have foretold. I’m glad to be done with this chapter, and reading back it’s not a bad first draft of a story. There’s lots I’d like to go back and change, but that’s not how this exercise works.
If, like me, you wait until the serial is concluded before you start reading, now is your chance to get to know Allison. I finally paid off something I set up long, long ago. It feels pretty good.
Blind! Allison fell to her knees, shaking, her stomach threatening to turn inside-out. She gasped for air, reeling and disoriented. Only moments ago, an eternity, she had been so close. Close to everything, almost one with the pattern beneath the chaos that governed the universe, the harmony of the world. Desperately she reached with her mind, tried to rejoin the communion, but found only blackness.
“Shoot them all,” she heard Lancia say.
“Allison!” Seiji’s voice, maybe. They were all going to die. Because of her. She heard the sound of guns being raised. You’d think they wouldn’t make so much noise. One of the soldiers chambered a round with a distinctive snick-snack. Funny he hadn’t thought to do that earlier.
— You could not win. Not against me.
Allison almost wept with relief to feel even a tiny fraction of White Shadow still in her mind. Don’t kill them.
— They do not matter.
Allison tried to reach through White Shadow, to use it to connect to the world of information. She could almost hear the music, almost feel The Pattern when White Shadow hammered her consciousness back into her own head. Stunned, it was seconds before she could speak, then there was nothing to say.
“Wait,” she heard Lancia say, from far away.
Seiji stared defiantly into the eyes of the woman who had interrogated him earlier. His clenched teeth almost shot of sparks, and the vein in his forehead pulsed in an X. The soldiers raised their guns and paused for a pregnant moment.
“Wait,” the interrogator said. The soldiers hesitated a moment, then lowered their weapons.
Seiji glanced over to where Allison lay curled on the floor, moaning, knocking her head against the tile with a steady rhythm. “She needs help,” he said.
Interrogator Woman looked at Allison and made a face. “I don’t think there is help for her.”
“Who are you really?” Seiji asked.
The woman laughed softly. “So quaint,” she said. “He said ‘really’. Do you have any idea what that means, little boy? Does ‘really’ even exist?”
“Who are you?”
“I am everyone.”
“You’re not me.”
“Only because I don’t want to be.”
“Yeah, right.”
Seiji blinked and found himself looking at… himself. “Yeah, right.” his other self said. He blinked again and he was facing his interrogator once more. “There is a way you can live,” she said.
“All of us?”
“… most of you.”
“Then forget it.”
“Seiji, think for a moment. Your nobility is admirable, but nothing you do can save the American. You can choose to die, or you can choose to live. Neither choice will matter to her.”
“I choose to die,” Seiji said.
“I am sorry to hear that,” she said.
“Wait,” Kenzo said.
Ruchia opened her eyes and looked into his. So deep. So expressive. So purple. “You’re not really Kenzo,” she said.
He smiled, dimples forming on each cheek. “No. But is anyone? I can still make you happy.”
“Happier than he ever would,” she allowed.
Not-Kenzo chuckled deep in his throat. “I suspect you are right.”
Ruchia felt the heat rising to her cheeks.
“I wonder if you could do me a favor,” Not-Kenzo said.
His casual delivery put Ruchia on edge. “Maybe.”
“If you are helpful, I believe I can save your life.”
“What about my friends?”
“You do not have to worry about them.”
“No, but I choose to. What about my friends?”
“Each of you will be given the chance to be useful. Those who help me will live. Live very well, in fact.”
“What is it you want?”
“There is a key,” Not-Kenzo said. “The American has it. Not a physical key, but a code of sorts. A thought.”
“You want me to get it from her.”
“You need only make her think about it. We will do the rest.”
“Why should I?”
“Beyond saving your own life? If you help it would not be necessary to kill the American as well.”
“That’s not the same as saying you wouldn’t kill her.”
“The future is indeterminate.”
“Forget it!”
“You choose to die?”
“I choose to live by my principles.”
“Wait.”
The voice was a breathy whisper in Tasuke’s ear. “Good idea,” she said. She opened her eyes and looked down the muzzles of the rifles pointed at her.
“You wish to live?”
“Yeah, I think that sounds like a pretty good idea.”
“All you have to do is—”
“No.”
“You haven’t even heard wh—”
“If it starts with ‘All I have to do is’ then I’m not interested.”
“But—”
“Forget it.”
“Very well.”
All her friends were talking at once, but not to each other. It sounded like banter, the kind that came before violence. She glanced around the room, seeing with her eyes what only minutes before had been so complete inside her own head. There was only one door, and there were a lot of men with guns between her and it.
Lancia was the key. Before she could even think she launched herself at the woman who held all their lives in her hand. She drove her shoulder into the rib cage of the woman, lifting her off the floor and then piling her hard into the cold tile. Allison rolled and put her arm around Lancia’s throat. She started to squeeze. “Let my friends go,” she said.
“Very well,” Lancia said, perfectly calm. Allison squeezed harder.
“Shoot that one,” Lancia said, gesturing at Tasuki from where she lay.
“Wait!” Allison shouted but her voice was lost in the popping of firearms being discharged in a closed space. She couldn’t hear the screams of her friends as Tasuki’s chest exploded in a fountain of blood. The skinny girl convulsed and dropped to the floor.
Allison tightened her grip, wanting nothing more than to kill Lancia, no matter the consequences. At least keep her from saying anything else.
“Now that one,” Lancia said, this time pointing at Ruchia.
A bullet caught Ruchia in the throat, another in the forehead, and several in the torso. She fell and lay still.
“Stop it! Stop it!” Allison screamed. “No more! Please!” She didn’t have the strength to strangle her adversary anymore. She relaxed her grip but Lancia made no effort to rise. They lay in a tangle on the floor.
“You know what you must do,” Lancia said.
“No!” Seiji shouted. “Don’t give her anything! Damn—”
Lancia made a gesture and the soldiers cut down Seiji mid-curse, blood and gore coating the wall behind him. Allison was out of words. She just stared at the bodies of her friends and wept.
“You may as well shoot me, too,” Kaneda said.
“You belong to me,” Lancia said. She sighed. “Allison, I had hoped to be friends. Or at least partners. But that will never happen now.” She rolled away from Allison. “Shoot her,” she said.
“Noooo!” Kaneda shouted, even as the soldiers trained their weapons on Allison with a clatter. He threw himself on top of Allison as they opened fire, holding her, shielding her with his body. He jerked and twitched as the metal tore through his body, his face inches from hers. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. “In your arms,” he whispered, and died.
“Such a waste,” Lancia said. She looked at the captain of the soldiers. “Finish the job.”
Allison closed her eyes but she couldn’t erase the image of her friends lying dead around her. Her fault. Her doing. The bullet that took her life couldn’t come soon enough.
Only, this wasn’t her fault. She didn’t make White Shadow. She didn’t enslave the city. She didn’t give the order to shoot innocent kids. Anger stirred in her breast and with it the will to act. She opened her eyes and watched as the finger of a soldier pulled at his trigger with impossible slowness. She reached outward with her mind and found a tendril, a connection that led to White Shadow, a link it was using to watch her.
A bullet emerged from the barrel of the gun in a rippling cloud of vapor, and began its irrevocable journey to her heart. No stopping it. No getting out of the way. She was already dead.
Nothing to lose. She threw herself through the connection and right into White Shadow’s virtual lap.
—Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in.
Around her, almost within reach, was what she had once had. The world. Beyond that lay a new world, enticing, limitless. The Computer. White Shadow had not yet taken that power. It was waiting for something.
From far away Allison felt the bullet press into her flesh. Someone else’s flesh. She looked at White Shadow and smiled. “Reset,” she said.
Allison Crenshaw walked up the nearly deserted street toward her new school. She felt awkward in her uniform; the skirt seemed shorter on her than it did on the other girls. She walked alone, clutching her books to her chest, practicing her Japanese under her breath.
“Hey, watch out!” Allison turned just in time to see the kid on the skateboard before he crashed into her. She fell, books flying, conscious of her short skirt. She felt like she should have seen him coming.
Once more you can support Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked ideas when you shop at Amazon. Just start your shopping adventure by clicking the link in the sidebar, and while nothing else changes for you, a slice of the money you pay will make its way to the Secret Labs, located for the purpose of this exercise in New Mexico.
I hope so, anyway; I haven’t actually tested the links.
Shop and enjoy!
The theme for this month’s contest is “Red, White, and Blue.” Harlean (who is a fiction) and I didn’t have a chance to do a shoot specifically for the contest, but she went back into the archives and found a shot from the days of yore and gussied it up for this contest.
If you’d like to vote for us, we’d really appreciate it! The deadline is tonight, but just what time that means is anybody’s guess. Don’t wait another minute!
While you’re there, you have four other votes to spend, and there are some worthy entries. If you insist on voting only for ones that are on theme (olive drab is now part of red, white and blue it seems), that limits your options quite a bit, however, and if disrespecting the flag while trying to appear patriotic bothers you, then options are limited yet more. Even so, there are a few nice pics, so quit wasting you time here and go waste your time over there.
I am surrounded by TV screens, all showing things that resemble sport. In soccer, a Mexican team is playing a Spanish Italian one. I have to say I was pulling for Guadalajara over Seville or wherever Juventus comes from. [Um… Turin, actually.]
I didn’t see the goal, but I did see a few supposedly macho men lying on the grass crying. Not as many as I expected, which just goes to show you how far this league is from earning my respect. Only four episodes of babyism in the second half? That’s progress! I’d like to think the boys from North America spent less time on the soil than the Europeans.
Meanwhile, my left eye and right hemisphere have been absorbing X-Games. I watched an event where kids rolled their bikes down a ridiculous slope, up a ramp, through the air (tricks ensue) and then, if they land, they have a chance to do one more trick. I’d say maybe 30% landed the first flight. Probably less. These kids fell a long, long way, sometimes with a bicycle in the crotch, and when things came to a rest they took a deep breath and walked off, trying as hard as possible to NOT look hurt. A nice departure from the soccer.
And yet. Does the double-front-flip or the backflip-with-the-bike-spin score higher? That’s for the judges to decide. Ultimately most of the events in the X-Games are slightly-more-dangerous figure skating. Contestants do stuff and someone else decides who wins. Interesting, occasionally entertaining, but not satisfying from a sporting point of view.
When does hockey season begin again?
I’m in a bar right now, trying to get the blog mojo working. On the TV I just saw a commercial that featured some sort of record-breaking car jump. I just couldn’t get excited.
Back in the ’70s the guys doing jumps just put a big motor in their cars, set up a ramp, and took a shot at the other side. Sure there were some estimates of how far they would fly if they were going a certain speed at the top of the ramp, but there was still a seat-of-the-pants feel to it. You started small, you jumped farther and farther, and learned to land on your wheels.
Now, I see a specially-modified car sail through the air and all I see is math. The driver has only to hit the ramp at the right speed and keep level and Bob’s your uncle. [This has always been the case, but ‘the right speed’ was not as exactly-known as it is now, nor was it so easy to hit that speed back in the day. I contend. And now that I think of it, some ramps back then might have doomed the driver no matter the speed.]
Daredeviling, like tennis, has suffered from the advance of technology.
WWEKD?
Welp, it’s official, I’m a salaried employee of Apple. It’s not that big a change from being a contractor; I’ll be doing the same work as before.
While I was traveling my department moved to a new building, so when I got to my new cube for the first time, this is what I saw:
Balloons!
And yes, I do get a discount on stuff, and yes, they assume I’ll be buying for friends and family as well. So if you need a Mac system or an iPod (no iPads at this time), let me know.
